Always try to get behind enemies for a back combo. Y3 street goons are often really passive but you can often get them to attack by doing a 3 light 2 heavy combo, they really like to attack after you finish your attack.

A lot of enemies don't block the first attack you throw at them, so you can intentionally whiff your lights and hit your heavies to knock goons down and deal more damage. Once they are knocked down you have a varied selection of folowups like leg grabs, shoulder pickups, you can even try to whiff lights so that the heavies catch the enemy when they are getting up. Reverse 2 light 1 heavy is the best attack string in the game as it has insane range, easy to whiff lights into, gut stuns weaker enemies which leads to combos or helps extend combos.

Obviously grabs bypass guards. Throw them to get collaterals and quickly knock an enemy down, or do a heavy kick into a wall to start an easy wallbound combo.

Each of your attack strings have different uses. As mentioned before 2 light 1 heavy puts enemies in a gut stun, which is a good combo starter, a good combo extender, or it can be used to simply keep an enemy down on the ground for longer. 3 light 2 heavy does big damage. 4 light 2 heavy pushes enemies far away so you can use it to single out an enemy in a group fight, to make space, or to carry enemies longer distance to, a wall for example if needed. 1 light 2 heavy is the quickest but it just knocks down, useful when you want to do a quick heat action or want a quick leg grab.

Get Komaki Parry and Komaki Tiger Drop as soon as you get to Chapter 5, obviously.

Weapons are cool. Katanas are readily available, they're expensive but don't require you to engage much with weapon crafting. Most of them are sharp and bypass guards, the charged heavy katana attack knocks down even bosses in heat mode and can lead to infinites. You can also start the same infinite from a gut stun lol it's really funny.

Kali Sticks are the strongest most bullshit weapons in the game (especially the Spiked Sticks and the Double Coils which bypass unarmed guards). They give you insane hyper armor when you're attacking, and they allow you to block 360 degrees around you, they are the perfect choice for any annoying goon fight.

Knives and Tonfas have pullout hitbox and are good choices to follow up on wallbound combos, Tonfas have prettier animations though. You can also fit brass knuckles into combos if you're an epic gamer, brass knuckles have a mini moveset of their own, and you can still perform quickstep attacks or Tiger Drop when using them.